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Xbox One Vs PS4: The Top-Scoring Holiday Exclusives Land Elsewhere

The top-scoring video games of the holiday season aren’t Xbox One or PS4 exclusives.

There are almost no exclusive next-gen titles with a score above 80 on Metacritic.

Killzone: Shadow Fall has a 74 at the moment on the PS4. Dead Rising 3 landed a 77. Ryse: Son of Rome clocked in at 61, and Knack, which looked so adorable at first glance, has eked out a crushing 56.

Only Forza 5 at 82 on the Xbox Oneand Resogun at 83 for the PS4 stand out, and even they are hovering in the low 80s.

There are some third party, cross-gen games that have been very well-received, but the exclusives—the games that give us the most compelling reason to buy a platform in the first place—are a collective disappointment.

Interestingly, the best-reviewed games right now are coming out for other platforms entirely, perhaps most notably the Wii U and 3DS.

Super Mario 3D World is riding high at 94/100, and may be the first true “system seller” to land on the Wii U. It’s also a charming, beautifully designed platformer that you should only avoid if you have Mario fatigue.

The 3DS is the system to beat, however.

Pokemon X scored 87 and Pokemon Y scored 88. Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is sailing at the top of the pack with a 91/100. (I’m not a Pokemon player, but I love Zelda and A Link Between Worlds is every bit as good as everyone is saying. Each of the many hours I’ve sunk into the game has been a delight.)

So where we stand is a variety of really good cross-platform titles like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag which you can play on basically any system and a handful of top-notch Nintendo games, followed by a pack of absolutely middling stuff for the two newest consoles.

This isn’t really surprising. The Wii U had the same problem when it launched, as did the 3DS. There’s no doubt in my mind that better games are coming.

Nevertheless, Nintendo has a stronger hand this holiday season. The 3DS is arguably the system to beat. And gamers with current-gen (last-gen?) systems like the Xbox 360 and PS3 have access to all the better cross-gen stuff already. That’s the cheapest option—not buying anything—but both the Wii U and the 3DS cost much less than the new systems from Sony and Microsoft.

And even with a price-point advantage, the Wii U does have its own drawbacks: namely, a lack of robust third-party support. And the afore-mentioned Mario fatigue.

In any case, when making a buying decision this holiday season, just know that the games that make these new systems from Microsoft and Sony attractive purchases have generally not yet been made.

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